Signals of the Future: From Cheap Public Transport to Young and Old Living Together
Cheap Fares Help People and Planet
At the beginning of June the German Government started giving its citizens unlimited travel on regional trains, buses, and the underground for just €9 Euros a month. That’s around 25p a day!
The initiative — which will last for the summer months — is in response to rising fuel costs and the soaring cost of living. The Government hopes that the plan will ease financial woes, get people out of their cars, and also give a taste of what low-carbon living might be like. Millions of people have already bought tickets.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could do something similar here in the UK to respond to both the climate crisis and the cost of living crisis? Ideally, public transport would be made cheaper for all for the long-term; but even a short-term slashing of costs would help the hard-pressed and would also change behaviours by getting people to experience new ways of getting around.
Seriously affordable alternatives to the car has to be the future.
How to House New Arrivals
It’s Refugee Week in the UK and that set me thinking about how we provide shelter for those who arrive on our shores. Of course, only a very small fraction of those displaced get all the way to the UK. The vast majority move to their neighbouring countries.
More people will be on the move in the future, driven by high population growth in the developing world, the impacts of climate change and other environmental pressures, and the fact that widening internet access allows more people to identify a better life abroad. A small proportion of migrants will also be refugees, forced to flee their countries.
Migrants bring long-term economic benefits to destination countries; but they also bring short-term accommodation pressures.
In Amsterdam, I visited a scheme housing refugees and students in homes built of old shipping containers. In Ostfildern, Germany, an energy-efficient, timber-framed, apartment complex houses refugees with formerly homeless people. In the UK, thousands of people responded to the war in Ukraine by offering space in their homes.
As migrant numbers increase in the future, expect to see many more innovative schemes: re-using redundant buildings, airbnb-type schemes for refugees, and flexible homes that can be adapted to cope with changing demands.
Young and Old Living Together
I saw in Vice that a Japanese city is paying young couples to live near old people. Japan is struggling with the oldest population in the world. Chiba city has announced it will give a lump sum of nearly £2000 to newlyweds to settle in the buildings that have very few young people. They hope that this will help reverse the ageing of the. area’s population. https://lnkd.in/emmefwAH
Other countries, too, are trying to mix the generations. In Deventer in the Netherlands, a care home has — for a decade — given students free accommodation in return for volunteering with the elderly residents. In Helsingborg in Sweden, young and old live in an apartment block, and are encouraged to participate in a range of group activities for at least two hours a week.
These interactions help address loneliness and isolation. They can also help tackle the housing crisis facing the young. And academic studies (from Berkeley and Stanford) have shown that both young and old benefit from more interaction.
As the population ages across the developed world, expect to see more initiatives to encourage multi-generational living.
These articles are a compilation of my weekly Friday Futures Insights blogs on Linkedin #fridayfuturesinsight
